King Island And What It Means

Father Hubbard entitled this image “Mass in a Volcano Crater.” Hubbard began every day with Mass, no matter where he found himself. This photo of Hubbard and his party is taken during Hubbard’s two-month exploartion of the Aniakchak Crater on the Alaskan Peninsula, not long after Aniakchak’s May 12, 1931 eruption. Hubbard’s account and photos of this expedition were published in magazines and newspapers across Amnerica. (Left to right: William Regan, Richard Doublas, Kenneth Chisolm, Bernard Hubbard) Photo taken in 1931 by unnamed member of Hubbard’s party. Courtesy of Santa Clara University.

It took a strong subsistence culture to live on King Island, and that culture is still remembered long after the island’s last occupants left in the 1960s. Now one artist believes the time has come to return to King Island. Meet Inupiaq poet and author Joan Naviyuk Kane, on the next Talk of Alaska.